CAPOUYA, Emile

PERSONAL: Born in New York, NY. Education: Attended Columbia University and Oxford University.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Lyons Press, 246 Goose Ln., P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

CAREER: Writer and editor. Nation, literary editor, 1970-76; Bernard M. Baruch College of the City University of New York, NY, associate professor of English, 1971; Juilliard School, New York, NY, faculty member, 1971; New American Review, editor, 1979; Hippocrene Books, New York, NY, editorial director, 1980. Has worked as an assistant professor of English at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, and as a lecturer in comparative literature at New School for Social Research, New York, NY. Also served as executive director of Funk & Wagnalls, New York, NY, and editorial director of Schocken Books, New York, NY. Military service: Served as a merchant marine in World War II.

AWARDS, HONORS: Guggenheim fellow, 1964-65; Sue Kaufman Prize for first fiction, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1994.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Keitha Tompkins) Petr Alekseevich, The Essential Kropotkin, Liveright (New York, NY), 1975.

In the Sparrow Hills: Stories, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 1993.

(Translator) Ismail Kadare, Albanian Spring, Saqi Books (London, England), 1994.

(Editor) Classic English Love Poems, Hippocrene Books (New York, NY), 1998.

The Rising of the Moon: A Novel, Lyons Press (Guilford, CT), 2003.

Also author of From Rebellion to Responsibility, 1965. Contributor to magazines, including Saturday Review. Contributor to the New Deal Network's online publication The Magpie Sings the Great Depression: Selections from DeWitt Clinton High School's Literary Magazine, 1929-1942. Has translated works from French, German, and Italian.

SIDELIGHTS: Author Emile Capouya has held various positions as editor, instructor, and translator. Formerly an associate professor of English at Baruch College, Capouya has lectured in comparative literature at the New School for Social Research and has edited such publications as Nation and New American Review. He has also served as editorial director at Hippocrene Books. After coediting Petr Alekseevich's The Essential Kropotkin, Capouya made his fictional debut with the short story collection In the Sparrow Hills: Stories. Capouya's stories are told by a successive, nameless narrator, whose experiences trigger layers of distant and uncertain memories. The book's form and the force of the author's words impressed reviewers. "Capouya wants us to see the shapes of his characters' lives," commented Perry Glasser in an assessment of In the Sparrow Hills for the North American Review. Glasser continued, "these stories are shaped not by the demands of plot, but by the requirements of memory." Glasser did caution, however, that "Capouya expects an educated reader," concluding that "the greatest pleasure of this fine collection is the sure and early knowledge that one is in the presence of a keen intellect exploring a vast terrain of emotion and experience." The book received similar praise from a Publishers Weekly contributor, who stated, "Distinctive and powerful, these tales display an unusual sense of form combined with storytelling and elegant language."

Capouya edited the anthology Classic English Love Poems, an assemblage of works from forty-eight famous British poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Dryden, John Keats, and Aphra Behn. Capouya followed the anthology with another novel, which received more critical consideration than previous works. The Rising of the Moon tells the story of an American merchant marine named Mike who becomes marooned in France after World War II. Mike is mistaken for a murder suspect, beaten in an Italian jail, and talked into unknowingly transporting Nazi soldiers. Throughout Mike's adventures, the story often becomes memory-driven, similar to In the Sparrow Hills, as Mike recollects different aspects of his childhood. In a review of The Rising of the Moon for Library Journal, Lisa Rohrbaugh reported on this aspect of the book, stating "Capouya often digresses and uses flashbacks to Mike's youth . . . making it difficult to follow the story." A Publishers Weekly reviewer, however, voiced that Capouya's "lean, sinewy prose" gives the "meandering narrative intensity." Capouya reportedly supplemented the novel with his own experiences as a marine merchant, which Booklist's Donna Seaman deemed "watertight."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1993, Donna Seaman, review of In the Sparrow Hills, pp. 1295-1296; February 15, 2003, Donna Seaman, review of The Rising of the Moon, pp. 1046-1047.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 1993, review of In the Sparrow Hills, p. 76; December 1, 2002, review of The Rising of the Moon, pp. 1713-1714.

Library Journal, March 15, 1993, Janet Wilson Reit, review of In the Sparrow Hills, p. 110; December, 1993, review of In the Sparrow Hills, p. 208; January, 2003, Lisa Rohrbaugh, review of The Rising of the Moon, p. 152.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 18, 1993, review of In the Sparrow Hills, p. 3.

New York Review of Books, October 28, 1976.

New York Times Book Review, April 25, 1993, William Ferguson, review of In the Sparrow Hills, p. 20.

North American Review, March-April, 1994, Perry

Glasser, review of In the Sparrow Hills, pp. 44-45.

Publishers Weekly, February 1, 1993, review of In the Sparrow Hills, p. 70; February 3, 2003, review of The Rising of the Moon, pp. 56-57.

Times Literary Supplement, November 14, 1986; September 15, 1995, A. M. Daniels, "Albanian Spring: The Anatomy of Tyranny," p. 28.

ONLINE

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Web site,http://www.gf.org/ (February 16, 2004), "C Fellows Page."
New Deal Network Web site,http://newdeal.feri.org/ (February 16, 2004), "The Magpie Sings the Great Depression: Selections from DeWitt Clinton High School's Literary Magazine, 1929-1942."*